More and more people are using mobile devices, e.g. smart phones and tablets, to take everyday images. But despite the convenience, achieving good image, or photo composition, on mobile devices is not always easy for a variety of reasons. For example, a mobile device user may lack experience with photography or not have the time to practice.
Composition refers to the way various elements in a scene are arranged within an image such as a photograph. Composition guidance refers to the process of helping a user identify how to take an image with better composition. For example, a user may take an image of a subject but crop the image in such a way as to obscure the subject's face or position the subject awkwardly with respect to objects in the background, thereby causing a less-than-ideal composition. Similarly, a user may zoom in or zoom out in such a way that the composition of the image suffers.
User interfaces and computing devices may help a person take a better photo. But existing solutions for composition guidance using mobile devices do not fulfill the combined needs of responsive feedback, intuitive user-interface interactions, and straightforward information presentation to users. Moreover, existing solutions may not make efficient use of computing resources. For example, existing solutions may improve the composition of an image such as an image via edits such as cropping or zooming. But the taking and storing of an ultimately discarded image wastefully consumes resources such as processing power, memory, cache, and consumes power. Moreover, existing solutions may be cumbersome for the user. For example, existing solutions may not perform the edits in real-time. Accordingly, because of the time a user may take to perform this experimentation, the user may not be able to update, or retake, the original picture. The desired scene and subject may be lost and the user may not be able to obtain consistent results.
Accordingly, real-time solutions are needed to help users of mobile devices quickly and easily improve the composition of their photographs using their mobile devices.